Roku 2 Review

Roku is a streaming player that makes it easy to access movies, TV shows, sports, music, and even games through the Internet right on your TV. Roku offers several products, but they are all variations of a box that connects to your TV and Internet connection to offer content from an ever-growing source of online content providers that they refer to as channels. Most channels are free, but there all also many subscription based channels such as Netflix and Hulu Plus. If you are already a subscriber, you can use Roku to access your account right on your TV. If not, you can pay the content provider for a subscription (Roku doesn’t charge anything to access paid channels) or stick to the free channels. The $99 version even offers a remote with motion control (similar to the Wii) so that you can play games such as Angry Birds.

It is important to remember that Roku doesn’t provide any content. What you can watch on Roku you could watch on your computer or even on your TV without Roku by connecting your computer to your TV. Roku still provides a valuable service for the one-time cost of a piece of hardware: ease of access. It provides an entertainment hub that’s as easy to access as turning on the TV. It makes all your online media content easily accessible from a central location without having to connect anything or even have a computer nearby.What We Liked

Entertainment on-demand: shows on your own schedule without having to remember to set up the DVR

People nervous about the transition away from cable—it makes it easy by collecting your new entertainment content sources in one location much as the cable box did

Netflix, Hulu Plus, or Amazon Prime subscribers—give yourself a large enough library of content so that you don’t have any trouble finding quality entertainment to watch

People who want to get the full value from any online subscriptions you already have and it even can work in conjunction with your cable service to give your more on-demand content from channels such as HBO

Cost of Hardware

Roku costs from $49-$99 depending which of the 4 models you choose (you pay more as you add features and increase picture quality)